Making Black Gold!

So I have a non-traditional compost bin. I made it myself out of a large plastic storage tub and I keep it out in the garden year round. It's taken me a few years to really get it going and figure it all out so that I will have enough compost for all my flowers and few veggies that I grow.

A couple of years ago I took a plastic bin with a lid and burned holes in the sides with an old soldering iron. It's gotta have air and it lets the bugs in. If you sink it into the ground and put holes in the bottom, it can benefit from worms too but I wasn't sure where I wanted to put mine so I left it mobile.

I start it up in the spring when I plant stuff after the last frost warning. This year it's early because we usually get the OK in mid May. We now have an all clear in April. I'm just late in getting it done until now. So last year and the year before, I loaded it up with a bucket of garden soil dirt. You can put dirt in to get it started. Then I layered it with vegetable scraps and alternate brown material like leaves, paper, cardboard box strips, hay, grass clippings, etc. until it was over half full. I wetted everything down and then just added kitchen scraps as they accumulated. Every week I would take the lid off and churn it up with my shovel and then just keep it in the sun for at least six hours a day and let mother nature do her stuff.

I didn't have a lot last year but I learned the more you add, the more black gold you get back. So this year I got two five gallon buckets full of black gold for my little garden. I moved the big pieces over and dug out all the rich earthy smelling goodness and kept the big stuff that hadn't broken down yet in the bin. I then started over for next year with the layering. I add water almost every time I churn the mix but I do let it break down for a few weeks before I start churning in the spring.

I don't feel like a waster any more since I started my composting bin. I don't throw rotten veg and scraps in the trash. Nothing goes to waste. Every scrap of veggie, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, potato peelings, any rotten or mushy veg goes into the box I have in the kitchen for the compost bin. You can add dirt, hay, mulch, weeds, plant trimmings, etc. to the bin. The finer you cut up paper and cardboard, the quicker it will compost. Just don't ever add any meat, oil, fats or dairy to your compost.

Next spring you can have some black gold for your garden too! It's super easy!